stered a disorder of dark ringlets, a little garland
of yellow French roses surmounted her brow, and the whole was crowned by
a village hat of chipped straw. Amongst all the rosy and all the
weathered faces that surrounded her in church, she glowed like an open
flower--girl and raiment, and the cairngorm that caught the daylight
and returned it in a fiery flash, and the threads of bronze and gold
that played in her hair.

Archie was attracted by the bright thing like a child. He looked at her
again and yet again, and their looks crossed. The lip was lifted from
her little teeth. He saw the red blood work vividly under her tawny
skin. Her eye, which was great as a stag's, struck and held his gaze. He
knew who she must be--Kirstie, she of the harsh diminutive, his
housekeeper's niece, the sister of the rustic prophet, Gib--and he found
in her the answer to his wishes.

Christina felt the shock of their encountering glances, and seemed to
rise, clothed in smiles, into a region of the vague and bright. But the
gratification was not more exquisite than it was brief. She looked away
abruptly, and immediately began to blame herself for that abruptness.
She knew what she should have done, too late--turned slowly with her
nose in the air. And meantime his look was not removed, but continued to
play upon her like a battery of cannon constantly aimed, and now seemed
to isolate her alone with him, and now seemed to uplift her, as on a
pillory, before the congregation. For Archie continued to drink her in
with his eyes, even as a wayfarer comes to a well-head on a mountain,
and stoops his face, and drinks with thirst unassuageable. In the cleft
of her little breasts the fiery eye of the topaz and the pale florets of
primrose fascinated him. He saw the breasts heave, and the flowers shake
with the heaving, and marvelled what should so much discompose the girl.
And Christina was conscious of his gaze--saw it, perhaps, with the
dainty plaything of an ear that peeped among her ringlets; she was
conscious of changing colour, conscious of her unsteady breath. Like a
creature tracked, run down, surrounded, she sought in a dozen ways to
give herself a countenance. She used her handkerchief--it was a really
fine one--then she desisted in a panic: "He would only think I was too
warm." She took to reading in the metrical psalms, and then remembered
it was sermon-time. Last she put a "sugar-bool" in her mouth, and the
next moment repented of t